I'm sure at least one PLC was used somewhere making parts, maybe fueling, moving, etc...

SpaceX uses about 7 of our motion controllers for testing. Actually all the US private space programs use our motion controllers for testing. There are at least 5 private companies that are trying to make it to space. JPL used one of our motion controllers for testing the landing radar of the Mars Phoenix program.

Elon Musk is doing his part to help out. There is no money in getting to Mars. There is nothing there that could be brought back. It would be better to mine asteroids for rare earth and precious metals.

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"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see...." Strawberry Fields Forever, John Lennon

I put up with Elon Musk's arrogance and eccentricities because that's the price of genius. His long-term goal is to literally save our species, so if that means he orbits a convertible filled with pop culture references, OK.

Elon Musk is doing his part to help out. There is no money in getting to Mars. There is nothing there that could be brought back. It would be better to mine asteroids for rare earth and precious metals.

Agree... his donations are more than I can count

He could make a lot more money mining BitCoin, the technology he (and his team) is discovering will help someday so I have no problems with what he is doing

I do find it odd that half a million people will die from the flu this year and we dont know how to stop but we can send a car into space, have the rockets return so they can be reused

Perhaps I'm narrow minded, I know I'm definitely ignorant to the missions objectives and goals but, REALLY???!!! As much as I enjoy watching shows about space exploration and such, I just wish the same amount of effort was being done to save / help our planet as there is being done to reach outer space simply to make it just another frontier for the worlds rich folks to explore, pollute and play in. All the while making one rich guy even more rich.

just my opinion. I don't expect anybody to actually agree!

Think of it this way in 1975 the worlds POP was 4,079,087,198

In 2017 the world POP was 7,550,262,101, nearly doubled.

On average it take 1.5 acres to feed one person for one year. ( Plants and Cattle )

According to the University of Texas:
"The total land surface area of Earth is about 57,308,738 square miles, of which about 33% is desert and about 24% is mountainous. Subtracting this uninhabitable 57% (32,665,981 mi2) from the total land area leaves 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres of habitable land."

That's 2.088 ( in 75' it was 3.86) acres of land per person. And as long as we crave procreation, that number just keeps getting smaller and smaller.

So how many years before we outgrow the resources we use to survive. On average, population growth is 1.23% per year. That's right around another 50 years and the acre per person number will have shrunk below sustainable averages.

Save our planet?...............................I cannot speak the words that WILL save our planet for fear of being labeled a Heretic.

But here's a fitting tombstone epitaph for the old gal "Here lies planet Earth, Screwed herself to death"

I agree. Rocket science isn't even rocket science anymore. We aren't talking Robert Goddard and Werner von Braun here. While the SpaceX launch and recovery is a pretty cool thing to see it is more of a tweak on past technology than it is a ground-breaking technological advancement. All the really hard control stuff they are doing needed to be solved in order to launch the thing in the first place. It is certainly not conceptually harder than the double inverted pendulum videos that you see on the internet. It is the unmodeled details and the fact that you can't do non-destructive system tests that make things difficult.

Disease biology is a constantly moving target, both on the pathogen side and the infected side. The cost of failure is extremely high and unbridled testing is ethically unacceptable; the two things that slow development of ANYTHING to a snails pace.

I'm not sure that it is all that odd. Rocket science is hard, biology is harder.

Its was more of a example than anything, point being how one can progress so much and another industry seems like its not moving at all

Another example... train wrecks, we have self driving cars but we have trains that collide? we had one this week in SC that killed a few and hurt a hundred, I understand we will always have failures in equipment but we should not train wrecks because of human error (unintentional)

On average it take 1.5 acres to feed one person for one year. ( Plants and Cattle )

How many acres did it take to feed one person for a year in 1975? To be honest, I don't have the answer but I'd be willing to wager a paycheck that it was a lot more than 1.5 acres. And the reason it takes so much less land to feed someone today is precisely because of the advances in technology that really smart people have made over the years. And those really smart people will continue to make those advances entirely on their own if we just let them.

How many acres did it take to feed one person for a year in 1975? To be honest, I don't have the answer but I'd be willing to wager a paycheck that it was a lot more than 1.5 acres. And the reason it takes so much less land to feed someone today is precisely because of the advances in technology that really smart people have made over the years. And those really smart people will continue to make those advances entirely on their own if we just let them.

Hello cbuysse,

I think you misunderstood the statement, The point was that in 1975 there was 3.86 acres available for each person. Today, based on POP growth, the available amount of land for one person has been reduced to just over 2 acres.

1.5 acres for one person for one year ( based on a 2000 calorie diet ) is what is required to produce enough plant and animal matter to sustain one person with 2000 required calories each day for one year. (someone very much smarter than me figured this out along time ago)

To expound on the theory, If population growth continues at around 1.23%per year (gotta have someplace to put all the people) then we will have reduced the amount of land available to produce the plant and animal matter to less than 1.5 acres in less than 50 years.

Farming technologies have made farming more efficient, but you still need enough land to plant it on. As with cattle, still need land to grow them on. In fifty years there wont be enough land.

If 25 bushels of anything needs one acre to plant, 10, 50, 100 years ago, still cant do it in a half acre today.

This is all really cool. Its an amazing milestone in the human moment and it would be awesome to have your name tied to something like this.

However...... Don't bash me to bad but.... Just imagine what this Musk fellow could do, had all of this energy, time, brilliant science and a following this massive be directed toward something that would benefit this Earth in its currently broken state. So many problems to solve, so many people in poverty, parts of our own continents suffering from severe draughts and wildfires. The constant need for affordable renewable energy, at a user level, which I'm sure these folks could likely solve. The fact that we don't even have a place to put or a method of disposing of the worlds recycled plastics. To simply ignore all of this and showboat a trip around Mars with the payload of a sports car! Kind of conceded!

Admire the technological accomplishments, of course I do! But it just seems such a waste of technology's abilities when something so much more important than having a car orbit our sun could have been done yesterday while the entire world watched.

Perhaps I'm narrow minded, I know I'm definitely ignorant to the missions objectives and goals but, REALLY???!!! As much as I enjoy watching shows about space exploration and such, I just wish the same amount of effort was being done to save / help our planet as there is being done to reach outer space simply to make it just another frontier for the worlds rich folks to explore, pollute and play in. All the while making one rich guy even more rich.

I also think it was a terrible idea to put 50 000 flame throwers on the streets! Its all fun and great till the wrong person gets their hands on one. That will be the next thing on CNN... "Flame Thrower Attack!"
But what do I know!

Just my opinion. I don't expect anybody to actually agree!

In our nearsightedness, it's a natural human reaction to question why a guy with this kind of vision and $ doesn't do more to solve current problems. I'm sure he would easily solve a lot of them, albeit temporarily.

This guy if different than most, if not all, who have come before him.

Some of us can plan ahead a step or two. Some can even plan five or six. A precious few can exceed a dozen steps. I think this guy has planned hundreds of steps on multiple paths towards the fulfillment of his ultimate goal. It's beyond me to fathom what that goal may be, but rest assured it will be awesome.